Simone Weil had a very direct experience of encountering Christ. To appreciate what happened to her we should know that from her youth she had been educated an agnostic and that explicit religion had played little part in her life until then.
Her home had been atheistic, her education totally indifferent to Christianity.
"As soon as I reached adolescence I saw the problem of God as a problem of which the data could not be obtained here below, and I decided that the only way of being sure not to reach a wrong solution, which seemed to me the greatest possible evil, was to leave it alone So I left it alone."
"The very name of God had no part in my thoughts.''
"In those days I had not read the Gospel."
"I had never read any mystical works because I had never felt any call to read them."
"I had never prayed. I was afraid of the power of suggestion that is in prayer."
''Until last September (1941 ) I had never once prayed in all my life, at least not in the literal sense of the word. I had never said any words to God, either out loud or mentally.''
On two previous occasions, Christianity had made an impression on her. The first time was the summer of 1935 while she was with her parents on holidays in a small fishing town of Portugal. On the feast of the local Patron Saint she watched the women march in procession round the ship; singing very ancient hymns "of a heart-rending sadness". It came to her in a flash of insight that Christianity was the religion of slaves and that she should really belong to it, as she was a slave herself.
The second occasion was a visit to Assisi, two years later, when she was overwhelmed by a profound religious feeling in the chapel of Saint Mary of the Angels. These contacts had predisposed her in a general sense, but they did not make her pray nor read the Gospel or other spiritual literature.
The meeting with Christ came in the monastery of Solesmes in 1948 during Holy Week. Solesmes was famous for its Gregorian chant and perfect Roman liturgy. In spite of the splitting headaches she was suffering from in those days, a residue of neglected sinusitis, she enjoyed the beauty of the music and the meaning of the words. "In the course of these services the thought ot the passion of Christ entered into my being once and for all '' 18 She was also helped by a young English Catholic who was a visitor at the monastery and who talked to her occasionally. She was struck by the angelic radiance on his face after he had received communion.
In one of their conversations her new friend talked about English poets of the XVII century who had written mystical works and recommended them to her. Simone took the trouble to read them up and was immediately intrigued.
There was in particular one poem, entitled 'Love' by George Herbert (1592-1633), which took her fancy. She liked it very much. She learnt it by heart. She used to repeat it often, as she says ''concentrating all my attention upon it and clinging with all my soul to the tenderness it enshrines."
The poem is, indeed, a gem of spiritual insight. Christ, love personified, invites us to enter his home. When conscious of our sinfulness, we hesitate to come forward, Christ overrules all our objections and makes us sit at his table. We need not be afraid of him. He knows our human nature because he created it, he has forgiven our sins because he died for them. The poem expresses the essence of the Gospel message.
Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
Guiltie of dust and sinne.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew near to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd any thing.
"A guest," I answer'd, ''worthy to be here".
" Love said, "You shall be he."
"I, the unkinde, ungrateful!? Ah my deare, I cannot look on thee.''
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
''Who made the eves but I ?"
''Truth Lord, But I have marr'd them: let my shame
go where it doth deserve."
''And know you not, sayes Love, who bore the blame ?"
"My deare, then I will serve."
"You must sit down,'' sayes Love," and taste my meat."
" So I did sit and eat."
During one of the times that Simone recited this poem she had a direct experience of encountering Christ face to face.
Without her realising it, as she confessed later on, the recitation must have assumed the virtue of a prayer. Then, unexpectedly, Christ presented himself.
''Christ himself came down and took possession of me.... In this sudden possession of me by Christ, neither my senses nor my imagination had any part; I only felt in the midst of my suffering the presence of a love, like that which one can read in the smile on a beloved face.''
The experience took her totally by surprise. It had never occurred to her that this might happen.
" In my arguments about the insolubility of the problem of God I had never foreseen the possibility of that, of a real contact, person to person, here below, between a human being and God. I had vaguely heard tell of things of this kind, but I had never believed in them.... God in his mercy had prevented me from reading the mystics, so that it should be evident to me that I had not invented this absolutely unexpected contact.''
It was this experience that made her study the Gospel. She re-read the Greek classics and discovered they were "bathed in christian light". She noticed how the Bhagavad Gita is filled with "words of such a christian sound." And most of all, she learnt the Our Father in the original Greek and made it her life prayer. ''I had made a practice of saying it through once each morning with absolute attention."
The Our Father became for her the vehicle of a regular mystical experience. ''Although I experience it each day, it exceeds my expectation at each repetition." The prayer brought her usually into a state of metaphysical ecstasy.
''At times the very first words tear my thoughts from my body and transport it to a place outside space where there is neither perspective nor point of view. The infinity of the ordinary expanses of perception is replaced by an infinity to the second or sometimes the third degree. At the same time, filling every part of this infinity of infinity, there is silence, a silence which is not an absence of sound but which is the object of a positive sensation, more positive than that of sound. Noises, if there are any, only reach me after crossing the silence."
This experience of limitless reality was sometimes enlarged by a distinctly different sensation, namely the presence of Christ.
"Sometimes, during this recitation or at other moments, Christ is present with me in person, but his presence is infinitely more real, more moving, more clear than on that first occasion when he took possession of me."
Text from: JOHN WIJNGAARDS, Experiencing Jesus, Notre Dame, Indiana 1981.
